"No; it belongs to Clarke's Englishman."
"Who's he? It's a curious way to speak of a fellow."
"It fits him," said the other. "Guess he's Clarke's, hide and bones, and that's all there'll be when the doctor has done with him. He's a sucker the doctor taught farming and then sold land to."
"Then who's the doctor?" Harding inquired.
"That's not so easy to answer, but he's a man you want to be friends with if you stay near the settlement. Teaches farming to tenderfoot young Englishmen and Americans; finds them land and stock to start with, and makes a mighty good thing out of it. Goes to Montreal now and then, but whether it's to look up fresh suckers or on the jag is more than I know."
"We met a fellow called Clarke at the Windsor not long since. What's he like?"
Gardner described him and Harding said, "That's the man."
"Then I can't see what he was doing at the Windsor; an opium joint would have been more in his line."
"Does the fellow live at Sweetwater?" Blake asked.
"Has a farm, and runs it well, about three miles back, but he's away pretty often in the North and at a settlement on the edge of the bush country. Don't know what he does there, and they're a curious crowd; Dubokars, Russians of sorts, I guess."